SF/F Review – Mexican Gothic

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Synopsis: A young debutant in 50s Mexico visits her creepy in-laws in an attempt to rescue her cousin from their possibly-haunted house.

Book Review: This book positively drips with atmosphere. Moreno-Garcia does an amazing job of building a disquieting, gothic mood that permeates every sentence and page. I heard rumors that this may be made into a TV series, and I really hope they're true, because the visuals you get while reading it are absolutely gorgeous. With a good director and skilled musician, this thing will be a joy to watch, and probably a classic in goth circles for decades. The protagonist, Noemi, is also flat-out awesome (with caveats given below). She the epitome of the smart, self-assured woman that knows how to manevuer in and optimize her world in a society stuck in the 50s. She reminds me of the women Rosalind Russell usually portrayed. I could watch that sort of character for hours. When they're doing something. Which is sort of the problem with Mexican Gothic. Mexican Gothic starts out by building a spectacular setting, populating it with interesting charecters, showing us many hints of mysterious and creepy doings... and then keeps doing that, over and over, for most of the book. It's really good at doing this, but it goes on for way, waaaaaay too long. For quite a while it feels like the author is just spinning her wheels, not quite sure where to go next. Noemi starts doing the same thing, spinning her wheels without accomplishing much, remaining coy and uncommited to any action long after the conflict should have started, and continuing for many chapters. After quite a while of this, we shift abruptly into the climax of the book. It's an extended climax, so it goes on for a while, but it's really good. The novel is fun and exciting again. However, once it's all over, the whole thing feels kinda unearned. Like something is missing. We went right from teasing to banging without any buildup beforehand. While I'm not a huge fan of the standard Three Act Structure, I think it's a useful lens for analyzing Mexican Gothic. Because the problem with this book is that it doesn't have an Act Two. There is no escalation of conflict, no wins and losses as stakes keep rising, no feeling of things accelerating into ever worse territory. These things don't need to happen as physical conflicts, and with a protagonist like Noemi they probably shouldn't. But we never really get to see our hero in action at all until the Act Three climax begins. Basically, Act One is extended through the entire duration of where Act Two should have been. It makes for kinda boring reading in the middle, and an overall unsatisfied feeling at the end. So, while it does a lot of things very well, I think the book has too deep of a flaw at its core to recommend it. Not Recommended. Book Club Review: While we did have one person that really loved this, we lost a lot of readers around halfway through the book. Probably for the aforementioned reason. The turn-out was on the low side for our book club. There was some decent discussion about what went wrong, as well as praise for the skill in setting. There was a little bit of discussion about the roles of wealth and women in the 50s, but the novel didn't give us much to work with there, since we only see the setting up of those conflicts at first, and then a no-holds-barred blow-out finale that doesn't really involve social issues. Overall, not bad. I'm kinda on the fence here. There are some circles where this book is getting a fair bit of buzz, and if you're in/near one of those, I would recommend it as background for those conversations. If you're just looking for a book to talk about with friends without the wider SF world as a consideration, I would ultimately not recommend it.